


Better Than Me

by FaithWinchester



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Supernatural
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:40:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21587755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaithWinchester/pseuds/FaithWinchester
Summary: Songfic: Better Than Me by HinderDean thinks he's the reason she's stuck in this world of magic and monsters, he has no idea where she comes from
Relationships: Dawn Summers/Dean Winchester
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	1. I Think You Can Do Much Better Than Me

**Author's Note:**

> The song belongs to Hinder, boys belong to Kripke and Dawn is Whedon's. The plot-bunnies are the only thing I can claim here...
> 
> Comments, including constructive criticism are welcome!

__

_I think you can do much better than me_  
After all the lies that I made you believe  
Guilt kicks in and I start to see  
The edge of the bed  
Where your nightgown used to be  
  
He punched the pillow again, bunching it beneath his head, knowing it wouldn’t help. His eyes refused to close, staring at the other pillow, untouched, lying perfectly placed on the other side of the bed, the side furthest from the door. He always claimed the other side first, feeling the need to put himself between her and any possible danger. Bed was the only place she’d let him do that, at least by choice. Without permission from his brain, his hand slid across the bed, fingers clenching in the cool, crisp sheet, where no body had been lying, where she should have been.  
  
He hadn’t meant to lie to Dawn, not really. He just wanted to keep her safe. All those times he’d told her he and Sammy were going out to gather intel, asked her to stay at whatever hellhole motel they’d checked into, to work the computer and learn what she could. Finding the bad, taking care of it themselves, just him and Sam. Then coming back and telling her it was a false alarm, that there was nothing there. All so she wouldn’t get hurt. Sure, he’d played it by the book when it was a routine haunting, salt and burn, exorcising a demon or two or even vampires, she was good with those. But the dangerous stuff, the wendigo, the werewolf, those he kept her out of.  
  
It was the shapeshifter that had done him in. They’d left her behind again, clicking away on her laptop, moving easily through the mind-boggling amount of information on the internet as only the brainy types like she and Sam seemed to be able to do. They’d found the shifter easily enough. Catching it, though, had been another matter. It escaped the old warehouse where it had been living and disappeared into the night, leaving Sam and Dean to follow it’s trail- right back to their motel.  
  
With a sick feeling of fear in his gut, Dean had kicked open the door to their room to find Dawn locked in a kiss with the shapeshifter, who was wearing Dean’s own face. Dawn’s head had come up, her eyes locking with his, taking in his dirty, disheveled appearance and the horrified look on his face before she screamed and shoved away from the shapeshifter, scrambling back across the bed. The shifter followed, most likely intending to use her as leverage, but Dawn’s hand had slid under the pillow, where she kept her birthday gift from Faith.  
  
The silver blade slid into the shapeshifter like a hot knife into butter. Dawn’s hands were shaking, covered in blood, but she refused to release the hilt of the knife, drawing it back out of the body herself and getting to her feet. Her eyes were wide, accusing and so blue.  
  
“Gathering intel?” she said, her voice trembling, angry and Dean knew he’d lost her.


	2. I Told Myself I Won't Miss You

_I told myself I won't miss you_  
But I remember  
What it feels like beside you  
I really miss your hair in my face  
And the way your innocence tastes  
And I think you should know this  
You deserve much better than me  
  
She’d probably have forgiven him, in time, but he hadn’t given her the chance. She’d gathered her stuff and moved to the room next door, the room Sammy had been staying in. His younger brother looked apologetic when he tossed his own bags at the foot of the bed Dean had been sharing with Dawn.  
  
“Look, Dean, I’ll sleep on the floor tonight. We’ll get a different room tomorrow,” Sam had said, but Dean shook his head.  
  
“No, Sammy. Take a shower, get changed. We’re leaving in an hour,” Dean told him. Sam had pulled out his cell phone.  
  
“I’ll let Dawn know,” he said, but Dean shook his head and Sam’s finger paused over the speed dial button that would call Dawn. His eyes were wide, questioning.  
  
“No. She’s not coming with us. It’s too dangerous, tonight proves it. I can’t-“ he paused, took a breath and let it out before continuing. “I won’t let something like this happen again. She’s not like us, she’s just a girl, this doesn’t have to be her world. I’ll be damned if I’ll let her get killed because I’ve dragged her into this.”  
  
“Dean-“ Sam started to protest, but Dean cut him off.  
  
“No, Sam! This is it! It ends now. You can come with me or stay with her, but either way, you’re not calling her and I’m pulling out of this place in sixty minutes.”  
  
In the end, of course, Sam had left with him, but he’d left Dawn some money and a letter in a sealed envelope, tucked into the crack under her door. He didn’t say what he’d written and Dean refused to ask.  
  
The silence in the car had been deafening. No rock and roll blasted from the speakers. There was no cool white glow from Dawn’s laptop in the backseat, no sound of her fingers clicking away at the keyboard and no faint giggles, outraged gasps or ‘hmm’ noises as she instant messaged with her sister and their old friends. Just silence, in the car, and inside Dean.  
  
There was no wondering if Dawn was talking about him on her computer, no thinking about how much further until he could stop at a motel and tumble her into bed. No constant babble in his head telling him he was in too deep, that he’d fallen for her and she was under his skin and god, didn’t it feel good! Just the deafening silence of emptiness, not even a pounding heart, because he’d left it behind in room 7 of the Desert View Motel in the small, slender hands of one Dawn Summers.


	3. One Memory I Don't Wanna Lose

_While looking through your old box of notes_  
I found those pictures I took  
That you were looking for  
If there's one memory I don't want to lose  
That time at the mall  
You and me in the dressing room  
  
He’d completely forgotten about the pictures. They were in the trunk, in the steel lockbox that held John Winchester’s journal and what pictures remained of Mary Winchester and her family, before her death. There were a few snapshots of the three of them, John, Dean and Sam after that, but not many. He’d brought the box in on a whim, sitting alone at the small table in the cheap motel room. Sam had gone out, as he often did in the last month, since they’d left Dawn, leaving Dean to his own thoughts. To his misery. He sifted through the memorabilia with an uncharacteristic nostalgic feeling. Underneath it all was an envelope, 5x7 with a brad clasp holding it shut. His hands were shaking when he opened it.  
  
Her smile had been shy, her eyes hooded with desire, their color darkened from it usual bright blue to a deep cobalt. It’d been a whim, picking up the disposable camera that day at a gas station and she’d been nervous as hell when he’d pulled it out of his bag that night. Still, she’d posed for him, looking both schoolgirl innocent and porn star seductive, all at once in the pale blue lace bra and matching panties. He remembered when she bought that set.   
  
He’d lost at a game of pool and was paying the price, a trip to The Mall. There’d been a Victoria’s Secret store and he remembered the way she’d looked at him as they went inside. Sam had long since escaped to a computer store, leaving the two of them alone. Dawn had been picking things off racks and out of bins and then led the way to the dressing rooms. He waited dutifully outside until she’d opened the door just a crack and peered out. Seeing no one watching them, she’d grabbed his jacket and dragged him inside with her, locking the flimsy door. She’d modeled for him, several different sets of underwear and he’d taken great pleasure in helping her out of each one of them. The blue set was the only one she bought that day. Looking at them now in the pictures made his chest ache and his arms feel empty. It’d been so long since he held her.


	4. I Remember

_I told myself I won't miss you_  
But I remember  
What it feels like beside you  
I really miss your hair in my face  
And the way your innocence tastes  
And I think you should know this  
You deserve much better than me  
  
He’d been her first. Several months before their encounter in the dressing room Dean had almost made love to her in the back of the Impala, only to find out at the last minute that she was a virgin. She’d been angry when he stopped, demanded that he finish what they’d started, but Dean had refused, instead driving them back to the motel and getting a second room from the one they’d been sharing with Sam. The three of them always rented one room with two beds and each of them took turns sleeping on the floor. This time, though, Dean wanted to no interruptions from his brother.  
  
She hadn’t been the least bit hesitant. He learned long before that night that when Dawn decided she wanted something, there was nothing to do but get out of her way. Her hands were trembling as she unbuttoned his shirt, her teeth catching at her lower lip, nervously, but she shoved his shirt out of her way and then stripped her own over her head. She’d been wearing a bright pink bra and the tiny bows on each strap had made him smile. Getting rid of the rest of their clothes had been much faster.  
  
She was slender, with curves in all the right places and legs that went on for miles and her skin had been like silk under his callused hands. He remembered hesitating, thinking that the roughness had to be uncomfortable, until she looked him in the eyes and demanded he touch her. The blunt order pushed him over the edge and then he was touching her, stroking, kissing, tasting. She tasted like sex and candy, sin and innocence and when he pressed inside her, she cried out, pleasure and pain in one sound and he swallowed it with a kiss.  
  
They’d passed that whole night making love, until they both fell into an exhausted sleep. He’d clutched her to him until late into the next day, when Sam finally came knocking at the door. Nothing had ever been the same after that.  
  
Dean snapped out of the memory as he came across a sealed envelope with his name on it, scrawled in her loopy handwriting. He carefully tore the end of it open and pulled out several sheets of paper. Unfolding them, he began to read.


	5. I Can't Pretend

_The bed I'm lying in is getting colder  
Wish I never would've said it's over  
And I can't pretend... I won't think about you when I'm older  
Cause we never really had our closure  
This can't be the end  
  
 **Dear Dean,  
  
I don’t know how long it will take you to find this. I hope, honestly, that it takes you a while. Last night we made love and it was the best night of my life. In truth, you and Sam, well, mostly you, are the best thing that has ever happened to me. I have to write this letter because I’m afraid of what is going to happen when I tell you the truth. About me, about where I came from and who I am. I know you think I’m just a girl from California, but I’m more than that, and less. I just hope that after you read this, you’ll still care about me, still want to be with me.  
  
The thing is that I’m not real. At least, not the way most girls are…**_  
  
It began to be harder and harder to breathe as Dean read the letter. Her handwriting was neat and clear (even if it was written in pink pen), not her usual careless scrawl and she’d filled in page after page, explaining that she hadn’t been born like normal girls, that she’d once been a key, made of mystical energy, for the purpose of opening a rift between dimensions. She wrote about her sister, Buffy (what kind of name was that anyway?) the Slayer. About Faith and Giles and Xander and Willow and the way they’d fought evil for so long in Sunnydale before they’d finally closed the Hellmouth and the town had been wiped off the map. Dean remembered seeing something like that in the news, remembered Bobby saying it wasn’t any natural disaster but something more up their alley. His world was coming undone as he realized what had happened.  
  
His sweet, normal Dawn had been born into this world of demons and magic even more surely than he and Sam had. He’d been trying to protect her from something that was in her very blood, her essence, her being. He’d been fighting so hard to keep her safe that he hadn’t seen how _not_ freaked out she was about his world. And in the end, because he’d been blind, he’d lost her, walked out on the one person he might’ve been able to make a life with, who would understand and live this craziness with him. Blinking away the blurriness (obviously there was something in his eye, dammit, _he did not cry!_ ) he finished reading the letter.  
  
 _ **I hope like hell that you’ll forgive me for lying to you so long, you and Sam both. I was so afraid to tell you, so afraid that you’d leave me in some motel room, because of what I am, or what I used to be. I’m human now, Dean, no matter how I started out. I’m not a Key anymore, I’m a woman and (yes, I know, this will freak you out) I love you. There’s nothing more in the world that I want than to ride around the country in that big stupid car of yours and listen to you and Sammy bitch at each other while we help people and kill the baddies. I’m sorry I lied to you.  
  
Love,  
Princess**_  
  
It was seeing his nickname for her, written in that stupid pink pen, than pushed him over the edge. He couldn’t let it end this way.   
  
_…so afraid you’d leave me in some motel room…_  
  
Her written words tore at him as he realized that was exactly what he’d done. Dean snatched his cell phone off the nightstand and speed dialed Sam. His brother picked up right away.  
  
“Dean?”  
  
“Sammy, get back here, pronto,” Dean ordered.  
  
“Why? What’s wrong?” Sam demanded.  
  
“We’re going to get Dawn.”  
  
There was a pause, and then Sam spoke, his voice full of what might’ve been relief.  
  
“It’s about damned time!”


	6. I Think You Should Know This

_I really miss your hair in my face_  
And the way your innocence tastes  
And I think you should know this  
You deserve much better than me  
  
Dean’s hands were shaking as he got out of the car. Sam stayed in his seat, watching as his older brother walked up to the motel room door. Sam had called Dawn, found out where she was. Turned out she hadn’t gone too far from where they’d left her. A few towns over, another cheap motel. She’d told Sam she’d gotten a job as a waitress at a local bar and Dean’s teeth ground together at the idea of a bunch of local drunks staring at her ass every night. Still, she’d told Sam where she was at and Dean had driven there like a bat out of hell.  
  
His chest was tight as he raised his hand and knocked sharply on the door. He heard the chain lock slide free, then the deadbolt turned and the door opened, just a crack at first, then wider and there she was, blue eyes wide and surprised, lips parted in surprise. She was wearing his Metallica t-shirt (he’d wondered where it had disappeared to) and it hung softly to mid thigh.  
  
“Dean?” she said and her voice didn’t sound too steady. Still, the sound of her saying his name was like a balm on his soul and he could breathe again.  
  
“Hey, Princess. Can we talk?”  
  
Dawn moved back, opening the door wider and Dean stepped into the room, closing the door behind him.  
  
In the Impala, Sam smiled, then laid his seat back and slid over it, into the back of the car. He folded his jacket into a pillow and pulled the blanket from under the driver’s seat, where he kept one at all times. For once, he didn’t mind sleeping in the car.


End file.
